Team Goals
for the
Team Win
Training is being developed for a startup membership retention company. The business model is built on customer service agents taking calls in Zendesk (a customer support SaaS platform) and deciding how to process each ticket. I served as a consultant to strategically design training to address a pain point.
Experience the Training Solution
Articulate Storyline 360 eLearning module
Coming Soon~
Retention Express
Client
Task Analysis & Design
Project Type
New Hire and Retraining
Training
What's the Game Plan, Coach?
This CEO (and SME) is a big sports fan, especially the Atlanta Braves and Dallas Cowboys. He works closely with his team leads, producing and delivering a lot of his employee training himself.
As a sports fan myself, especially that of team sports, I leveraged the team-building, train right from the start, we're here to win mentality into designing this training.
Many factors, along with being geographically-dispersed across U.S. time zones, get in the way of building a team spirit and maintaining the momentum. I designed this training with a gamified approach using football as a basis for garnering the competitive spirit. The CEO is the head coach, the customer service agents are the players, and we're her to win this game!
A Look at the Playbook
Analysis of the problem was mapped out after two sessions with the SME. His business model seemed complex until I got the behind-the-scenes tour of his platforms. The problem lies in managing the ticketing system in Zendesk; however, I got to see how the agents utilized the Slack channels (which spoke to the engagement/teamwork side of the equation) and how the carwash clients are managed in Washify (a point-of-sale and car wash management system).
Tackling the Problem
The gap between the agents' current performance and the team goal was quite large.
Onboarding training was not sufficient as new agents demonstrated a high error rate, which was bogging down the backlog of unsolved tickets.
Current underperforming agents needed retraining.
The overarching problem was that Retention Express could not take on new customers and scale the business if the team of agents couldn't handle the current load of incoming tickets properly and expediently.
The extensive backlog of unsolved tickets reflected poorly on the company's performance.
The ticket count 7 to 30 days out was incurring significant stress on the CEO.
Investors wanted to see better execution.
From Analysis to Design
The first step in solving the performance problem was to develop a few job aids for current and new agents.
The Lifecyle of a Ticket is a Quick Reference guide displaying a simple flow chart and explanations for each step.
The Managing your Que job aid is a "Do This, not That" visual to remind agents to organize their dashboard by ticket status.
These job aids are hosted on Trainual, the company's learning management system (LMS), where the client and his team leads train agents through Loom video trainings.
Write the Learning Objective
The business goal solves the performance problem. Discerning what change needs to be seen in agents required drilling down agent goals into 3 categories. Team goals are met when employee targets are hit. A team scoreboard will be the reduction of backlogged tickets. How to track individual progress is up for discussion. An internal leaderboard or point system (perhaps as a Slack channel) will help gain momentum. TBD
Offensive Strategy
Designing the training will be relevant and targeted to what the agents actually need to do on the job to reach the goal. They will practice solving tickets in 1 step, and avoid escalation (which is like fumbling the ball). Learners will be motivated by the first down markers. Each agent will aim for Peak Performance, which equates to 12-15 closed tickets per hour. Successful learners will score a touchdown and contribute to the scoreboard.
Put me in, Coach!
Design doc coming soon...